Takes place before Season one - just how did a sprite like Enzo meet a junkyard dog like Frisket? One lives on the top levels of the city, the other on the bottom of the worst sector around. Written a long time ago.

Enzo ran. He didn't care who saw him
or where he was going. there weren't many people on the streets right
now anyway, most of Mainframe's inhabitants were gathered in Kits
Sector. The explosion had destroyed the entire Twin City, along with
all of its population. A population that included Professor Alfred
Matrix, Enzo's father. He had heard the explosion a few nanos ago,
and like everyother sprite in the system, had rushed to the VidWindow
to find out what had happened. He'd seen the first reports, and that
had been enough for him. No one could have survived the destuction;
what had been the workplace for every High Data Sprite in the entire
city was now a small island with a few twisted buildings, half melted
by whatever had gone wrong. No one could have survived that, no
one...

Enzo dragged his sleeve across his
eyes as he ran in a futile effort to wipe the tears away. His sleeve
was already soaked with tears, but he didn't notice. All he knew was
that Dad was gone, and he wasn't coming back, ever. The seven month
old Sprite kept running, not caring where he was going, as long as he
could get away. He'd seen the horrified sympathy in the looks of the
binomes at school, and when he fled the classroom, in the looks of
binomes on the street. He couldn't take it, all he wanted was to be
alone...

His foot slipped on something and Enzo
skidded to his knees, scraping one on the rough pavement. He looked
up, and realized where he was. "Level 31... the lowest level in
Mainframe..." For a moment, fear overlaid the sadness, then the
grief came flooding back. "I don't care... at least Dot won't
think to look for me here." Remembering his sister made the
tears threaten again, she was probably going through the same kind of
pain he was, but he couldn't handle it... thinking of Dot made him
think of Dad.

A general noise came from the road
behind him; someone was coming. Enzo stumbled to his feet and ducked
inside a fence, not noticing the sign he passed: "Pearson's Data
Dump." He took a running step and didn't realize until too late
that there was no ground under his feet. He fell, screaming all the
way, to the junk pile 40 feet below. His impact made a resounding
crash, and somewhere nearby, a pair of glowing eyes opened.

********

"Ow... whoa.. wha-what happened?"
His head hurt. That was Enzo's first thought, just how much his head
hurt. He didn't believe he could hurt that much, then the ache from
the rest of his body caught up with his brain. He opened his eyes and
noticed he was on his back, lying on a pile of degraded parts and
some other stuff he didn't want to look too closely at.. it might
look back. He shoved himself to his feet, then fell to his knees
again as the system tilted. "Whoa.. this is not good!" He
grabbed a pipe and pulled himself up, feeling all the various
scratches and bumps he'd gotten, then looked up.

"Whoa, duuude... I fell from
there? I'm lucky I wasn't deleted! Now, how am I going to get back up
there?" He frowned, realizing there was something wrong. He
could hear a low rumbling sound not too far off, but had no idea what
it might be. "Hey, where am I? What's going on, how did I get
here?" He looked down at his sleeve, and vaguely remembered
wiping his eyes. 'Now why would I wipe my eyes.. was I crying? Why in
the Net would I be -"

Another sound, this time the siren of
an emergency vehicle, and he remembered, all in a rush. The
explosion, the running, the fall... and he remembered - "Dad..."
he wailed, and unseen things skittered away from the sound of his
voice. "DAD!!!"

The sound of his sobs were loud; other
then the occasional faint siren, there was no other noise in the data
dump. Even through his crying, that struck Enzo as rather odd. What
was dad always telling him about the dump? He tried to remember, then
realised the metal plate he was sitting on was shivering, and he
heard the low rumbling again, but this time it was much
louder. He looked up with a gasp, and saw two glowing eyes staring
back at him from the semi-darkness.

The eyes didn't move and the growling
didn't get any louder, and instead of becoming more afraid, Enzo
started to get angry. How could that- that- whatever it was go about
doing its normal job of keeping the junk yard clear of intruders when
the Twin City had just been destroyed? How could it not be affected
by his dad's deletion?

Enzo got mad. He picked up a chunk of
rock and threw it at the red eyes, then picked up a pice of wood and
threw that too. Anything he could get his hands on he threw, yelling
and crying, angry that this thing, whatever it was, was somehow
ignorent of his loss. He finally found a length of pipe and ran
forward, yelling as he swung the pipe around, ready to hit-

A dog. Enzo blinked. It was a huge red
and yellow dog, and it was sitting there behind a pile of rocks and
junk, chewing on a piece of sheet metal. When the dog saw him, it
jumped up and started wagging its tail, evidently waiting for him to
throw the pipe he held. The dog barked, tilted its head and lolled
its tongue at him, then flipped the piece of metal it had been
chewing back over its shoulder to fly off into the darkness. The dog
barked again, waiting for Enzo to move.

It was bad enough that this dog didn't
know he was hurting, but now it wanted him to play with it? Enzo
dropped the pipe in disgust, then, ignoring the dog, he turned and
started looking for the way out of the junk yard. At the far side of
the pit he saw a light, so he started towards it. When he got to an
open space a few nanos later, he saw more lights and a shack with a
ramp behind it that led back up to the city. He wrapped his arms
around himself and shivered, it was dark and he wanted to go home...

As he trudged through the piles of
scrap metal, Enzo noticed that the red and yellow dog was following
him. He spun around and yelled at it, "Goaway!
I'm leaving, I don't want any of this stupid junk, so leave
me alone!" He started walking towards the lights again, but
the dog wouldn't leave, it kept following him as he stumbled around
in the junk. After the tenth time of falling and scraping his knees,
Enzo tripped, landing against a stack of boards, knocking them out
from under a pile of crates. The junk on top of the crates was well
over three times his height, and Enzo looked up to see the entire
pile of junk sliding towards him. He froze; he was too tired and
bruised to move very fast anyway, and there was no way he would have
made it out of the way even if he had been his usual hyper-active
self. Enzo closed his eyes and waited for the first impact.

Suddenly he found himself yanked up
and out of the way, and being carried out of danger. Something had
clamped around his waist and was holding him suspended horizontally
in the air, face down. He wiggled a bit, and turned to look behind
him, when he heard the resounding crash of the junk pile come
tumbling down. Enzo's jaw dropped open in shock - if he'd been caught
under all of that, he'd have been deleted for sure... then he saw
what was holding him.

The big dog blinked at him and tilted
it's head, and Enzo almost hit the ground face-first before the dog
tilted it's head back the other way and placed him on his feet.

"Uh... thanks!" Enzo stood
there, still stunned by the combined noise, relief at being alive,
and the method of rescue. He looked down at his shirt: there were no
bite marks, and no pain from the dog's teeth, in fact, he had hardly
even felt being grabbed. He looked back up at the dog. It's mouth was
big enough that it could probably eat him in three bites, and he
froze again as it stepped forward, bringing the end of its nose right
up to his face - then a huge red tongue flopped out and slopped over
his face.

"Eww! Phooey!" Enzo dragged
his sleeve across his mouth, grinning in spite of his gloom, and
laughed a little as the dog pushed him down with its nose and licked
him again. "Hey! Will you-" Enzo couldn't say more, as the
dog put one huge paw on his chest and continued licking his face.
"Ack! Will you stop- ick! Hahaha! Stop it!"

"Frisket!" Light blinded
Enzo as it poured over him. The door of the shanty had opened,
revealing a One binome in the doorway; the light came from twin
floodlights on either side of the door. "What've you caught this
time, boy?" The grizzled old binome stomped down the wooden
steps, shading his eye from the light. "Who's this... a young
Sprite! And not in very good condition either. So lad, what're you
doing in the dump? Trying to steal something for kicks?"

Enzo shook his head and tried to shove
the dog, Frisket, off his chest. It didn't work. The binome noticed,
"Frisket! Down boy, get off the lad and let him get up." He
walked over and offered Enzo his hand, pulling the boy up smoothly
despite the fact that Enzo was taller then him. "So? Speak up
lad - what're you doing here?"

"My- my name's Enzo. Enzo Matrix.
I was just-"

"Matrix?" The binome shook
his head sadly. "Ah, boy... it's bad news I got for you then..."

Enzo sniffed and wrapped his arms
around himself as he looked up at the sky. Smoke was drifting far
overhead, and Enzo felt tears start slipping down his face again. "I
know... the entire Twin City..." He closed his eyes, not wanting
to believe it was real, and whispered, "Dad..."

He looked down at the touch on his
arms. The dog, Frisket, was bumping him with his nose on the one, and
the binome had his hand on the other. "Now, then, my name's
Pearson, I run the dump, and this big lump of data is Frisket, and
you're Enzo. We belong here, you don't. You should be with your
sister - she's probably worried sick about you." He waited until
Enzo nodded, watching his face carefully.

"Come on lad... let's get you
home."

********

Enzo looked out the window, staring at
Mainframe splashed by emergency lighting, looking towards the sector
where the Twin City used to be. There was almost nothing left there
that was recognizable, and most certainly no survivors. There was,
however, about 2 million more nulls in Mainframe then there had been
before. It seemed that his dad's experiment to un-nullify sprites and
backfired and ended up nullifying everyone in the city. Enzo rubbed
his sore eyes; he was too tired to cry anymore, and he was so sore,
every movement hurt.

He'd arrived at their home in
Pearson's old car, accompanied by the dog, Frisket, who wouldn't
leave him alone. Dot had been worried about him, and as soon
as they had landed, she'd ran up and hugged him. That had started him
crying again, and the two of them had held each other and cried for
about 5 nanos before Enzo ran out of tears. Dot had looked at him and
told him to go get some sleep, and that they'd talk in the morning.
She hadn't asked him where he'd been, or if he was ok, it was more
then obvious where he'd been, and that nothing was ok. He'd been
grateful for that, and he'd turned to thank Old man Pearson before he
went inside.

"Mr. Pear- Whoa!" Enzo had
almost jumped 3 feet in the air as he turned and found himself
face-to-nose with Frisket. He'd gotten another face wipe from
Frisket's tongue before Old man Pearson called him off, but that was
all right. He was getting used to it by now, and actually reached
around and hugged the dog's neck. "Thanks, Frisket, for
everything." Frisket had nodded, barked and jumped back into the
front seat of Pearson's car. Dot just looked stunned.

"My... that's a big dog."

Mr. Pearson just smiled. "That he
is, ma'am. Now then, how about the two of you go get some rest. You
look like you need it." The two had nodded; Dot was still rather
distant, but she managed to say "Thank you Mr. Pearson. I had no
idea where Enzo was, and, well, thank you." The binome had
nodded and gotten into his car. Just before he took off, he yelled at
Enzo. "And make sure you stay out of the dump from now on! I
don't want to catch you in there again, you hear me?"

Enzo had nodded, then struggled
upstairs into bed. He was exhausted but couldn't sleep yet, so he sat
there and stared out the window. The sound of a sigh made him turn.
Dot stood in the doorway, and came in when she saw him looking at
her.

"Do you know... we're the only
ones left?" Enzo blinked.

"Only ones left?" He thought
about that for a moment while Dot nodded. "You mean, we're the
only high-energy Sprites left in all of Mainframe?" He couldn't
believe it. All of the system's highest classed Sprites were
gone? Nullified? ALL of them? All his friends, his
classmates, all gone?

Dot nodded, tears sliding down her
face. "All of them, except you and me, little brother. We're all
that's left."

Enzo had thought that he had no tears
left, but a tear squeezed out one eye, and he clutched at Dot as they
fell like rain again. Dot held him tightly, like an anchor in a
storm. Brother and sister sat like that for a very long time, knowing
that all they had left was each other, fiercely determined not to let
go.

********

When Enzo woke up, he was laying in
bed. Dot had apparently put him there before she had headed off to
sleep, because the door of her room was closed when he went into the
hall. Enzo sighed, and got cleaned up. His face felt like it had been
scratched by sandpaper, and looked like it too, in some spots. He got
some of the medical 'goop', as he called it, out of the first aid box
and watched most of the scrapes and scratches disappear. The goop,
however, couldn't make the pain of loss any less, so he concentrated
on just healing his scratches. He was having a hard time doing it,
apparently there was a kind of traffic jam outside. He tried to
ignore it. Dot still wasn't up, so he went down and made himself some
breakfast. He wasn't very hungry, but managed to eat some of it. The
noise from outside was louder, and there seemed to be a lot of
yelling. He got up and opened the door.

There were at least 20 CPU's outside,
two of them mangled and on their sides. About three times that many
binomes were hiding behind the cars, and they were all clustered
around.. Frisket?

"Frisket!" The dog's
head whipped around and he launched himself over the cars towards the
open door. The binomes scattered in a panic, almost climbing over
each other in their hurry to get out of the way. Enzo heard the
nearest officer shout "Watch out, boy! That dog's unstoppable!"
Frisket bounded up to the door and slid to a stop, right in front on
Enzo, and licked his face.

"Ack! Phooey!" Frisket
panted happily and pushed him over, then licked his face again while
Enzo tried to push him away. Frisket finally stopped, then wagged his
tail as Enzo tried to get up. He found a paw planted on his chest
again, and Enzo looked up into Frisket's eyes, and he could swear he
saw the dog smile. Enzo grinned and grabbed the spiked collar,
pulling down as hard as he could. The dog yipped and rolled to the
side, letting Enzo up, but not before he'd covered his face in doggy
kisses again.

The two of them, boy and dog, looked
up at the sound of laughter. Dot stood in the doorway, grinning, and
the police binomes were laughing as Frisket pulled Enzo around on the
ground. Dot, still looking tired, laughed as Enzo let go and Frisket
immediatly started licking his face again, saying, "Well, this
looks like the start of a wonderful friendship."

END

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